


Maple Syrup

by misura



Category: Party Down
Genre: F/M, Missing Scene, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-12
Updated: 2011-12-12
Packaged: 2017-10-27 22:24:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/300692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"I mean, what's in Vermont anyway, right?" she asked Henry - rhetorically, obviously.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Maple Syrup

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Annakovsky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annakovsky/gifts).



After four drinks, Casey decided moving to Vermont was a really stupid idea.

"I mean, what's in Vermont anyway, right?" she asked Henry - rhetorically, obviously. She _knew_ what was in Vermont, all right? Seen the picture show, and then some. She'd managed to mostly tune out the accompanying babbling, although here and there, combinations of words seemed to have made it through. Family-friendly. Car-pooling. Family-friendly. Job-openings.

Henry looked thoughtful. "Maple syrup?"

Casey was pretty sure there hadn't been any maple syrup in the picture show. Granted, after the hundredth picture or so, her eyelids had gotten sort of heavy (or, okay, maybe it had only been the tenth - they'd just been sort of boring, all right?), but she was relatively sure she'd have remembered a picture of maple syrup.

"Maple syrup," she said, by way of saying: 'I was asking a rhetorical question, you idiot. check a dictionary or something' - except, you know, _nicer_.

"Goes pretty good with pancakes." Henry looked like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. It probably wouldn't - not the expensive kind Ron liked to use on the job, anyway. Left a lousy taste, though.

Casey wondered why she'd been going for 'nice' just two seconds ago. "I thought you didn't want to hear about pancakes anymore." Much like Casey didn't want to hear about 'adequate sex'.

Insulting and denigrating, was what it was, and she didn't need some sort of ... _thing_ to get that from someone else than that dick who called himself her husband, all right?

"Yes, so that means I didn't want _you_ to talk about pancakes," Henry said. "I never said I didn't want to hear anything about pancakes from myself. So there you are."

"What?" Maybe she had a type, and that type was 'kind of a dick'. Not, like, _all_ the time; that would just mean she had lousy taste in men, and that wasn't true, clearly; she had very good taste in men. Some of the men she had the very good taste to like simply turned out to be dicks sometimes, that was all. It happened. Guys would be guys, and all that.

"Something that's in Vermont that you might like. Along with the Yaks." Henry looked vaguely pleased, like he'd personally brought maple syrup to Vermont, just so there'd be something there that Casey could like.

"Yucks," Casey corrected. "They're called The Yucks."

"Joke."

Good thing _he_ wasn't the one auditioning with Comedy Central. "Not funny and you know what? You can't just say 'joke' whenever you've made a mistake. Just ... man up. Admit you were wrong."

"Okay. I was wrong. I misremembered the very funny name of a group of no doubt very funny people."

Casey wondered why she'd even bothered. Time to get the conversation back on track - although she wasn't sure why she'd bother with _that_ , either. Mister 'Adequate Sex'. Not like it was likely anything would come out of that mouth of his that would make her forget about _that_ , and he hadn't been that great of a kisser, either, honestly.

"So, you like pancakes with maple syrup."

Henry shrugged. "They're ... not bad."

Ten bucks said he'd been about to say they were 'adequate'. And seriously, what kind of person had a word like 'adequate' in his daily vocabulary, anyway? He could've just said it'd been nice. Okay. Great. Perfect. Mind-blowingly awesome. An experience he'd remember for the rest of his life.

"Also," Henry went on, "I think I remember telling you very clearly I don't want to talk about pancakes."

Casey considered hitting him. "Actually, what you said was that while it was perfectly all right for _you_ to talk about pancakes, it was _not_ all right for _me_ to talk about pancakes. Ever. Now, I'm not Constance, okay, but I have to tell you I think that's pretty sexist."

"No, you don't," Henry said. Casey looked at him blankly. "You said you had to tell me you thought that's pretty sexist, but actually, that's not the case at all. You're a free woman. You _can_ tell me that's what you think, only there's absolutely no law or rule or person forcing you."

"All right, you know what? That's _it_. No sex for a week."

Bastard didn't even have the decency to blink. Well, at least Casey didn't have to feel even the tiniest, teensiest little bit guilty about maybe having hurt his feelings or having been too harsh, but still. She'd been sort of hoping for a little bit more of a reaction than, well, none.

"I wasn't aware we had the kind of relationship where there would be regular sex," Henry said.

"Well, we _might_ have had that kind of relationship," Casey said. "We _could_ have had that kind of relationship. It wasn't completely _impossible_ we'd get that kind of relationship."

"I think I got the point the first time."

"Too late now, though." Casey wanted to see him suffer. Just a little bit. She'd settle for a mild squirm, really, at this point. A squirm would be fine.

"Well, at least I know what I'll be missing." Henry's tone didn't quite imply that it wasn't much. Still, Casey was a good listener, and the general implication was definitely there.

"No, you don't," she said. "And guess what? You never will." Some people didn't deserve second chances. Hell, some people didn't even deserve _first_ chances, except that when you started thinking like that, you might as well swear off sex altogether and go join a nunnery or something - assuming those still existed, which Casey rather suspected they didn't.

"Okay," Henry said.

"You may look like you don't care, but on the inside, you're crying and wishing you could take back what you'd said. I can tell."

"Okay."

(A good comedian recognized sarcasm very well, so Casey figured that was pretty much that - another lesson learned, or at least another guy proven to be a total dick, except that somehow after another two drinks, Henry seemed to get a lot friendlier, even sort of attractive, in a slightly dick-ish kind of way, and Casey was still plenty of sober enough to say 'no' if she'd wanted to, so she sort of said 'yes', by way of kissing him back.)


End file.
